"This is what Ponce de Leon had been looking for but didn't find," says Manhattan dermasurgeon Nelson Lee Novick.

3-D imaging by Robert W. Ahrens,USA TODAY

Doctors are pulling polypropylene threads through patients' skin to raise sagging jowls, brows and necks. Performed under local anesthesia in only 45 minutes, it's being touted as a minimally invasive face lift, or so say practitioners and recipients of what's variously known as the ThreadLift, the Featherlift or the One-Stitch Facelift, depending on the brand of the suture and who's pulling the strings.

Devotees of threading are as breathless about its potential as they were about Botox a decade ago.

How the lift works

A physician makes a 3-millimeter incision at the hairline, jaw line or ear and advances polypropylene threads through the fatty layer under the skin&#146;s surface.

The barbed threads zigzag or arc through the drooping tissue, grabbing and lifting the brow, cheek or neck, depending on where the threads are inserted.

"This is what Ponce de Leon had been looking for but didn't find," says Nelson Lee Novick, a Manhattan cosmetic dermasurgeon who has ThreadLift appointments booked through 2006. "In one to two years, it will be the hottest lunchtime beauty fix probably of all time."

A ThreadLift typically lasts two to five years, but — depending on a patient's skin tone and how expressive they are — it can hold for as long as a traditional face lift, up to 10 years. Threading a full face and neck runs $7,000-$8,000, similar to what the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reports as the 2004 national average cost of a face lift and forehead lift ($9,000).

But unlike going under the knife, there's little swelling, little bruising, little scarring and little discomfort, enabling patients to return to work the same day.

Still, no pain means little gain, caution some doctors. The results aren't drastic, says Brent Sigler, a cosmetic dermatologist in Lone Tree, Colo., who has performed the procedure on perhaps 50 mostly female patients in the past year.

Targeted to forty- and fiftysomethings who are just starting to lose elasticity, "this is something to buy some time" before getting a traditional surgical face lift, he says. Other, older ThreadLift patients are those who have already had a surgical face lift and are looking to tighten things up a bit.

But "what (Sigler) says is subtle I thought was dramatic," says Vicky Larson, 47, of Littleton, Colo. Her jowls elevated, her cheekbones revealed, strangers started mistaking her for her 27-year-old son's girlfriend.

"When you get into your 40s, no one takes a double look at you, or it doesn't happen as often," she says. "Now I get more double looks, and that's always ego-inflating."

Manhattanite Pam Chenkin didn't want the severe tautness associated with a standard face lift. "I watch TV talk shows and you can tell who's had work done. I didn't think that was necessary for my job," says Chenkin, 58, who's studying to be a high school teacher. "Teenagers judge you by your appearance, and I thought it would be a benefit to me not to look young but to be youthful appearing."

There can be complications. Threads have been known to work their way out of the skin, infections have occurred, and patients have complained that the web of polypropylene in their face is uncomfortably palpable.

Other drawbacks are relatively minor. Sleeping on your back for six weeks is a must, to avoiding shifting the threads. For the same reason, smiling, laughing, yawning and munching on foods with substantial girth, such as hamburgers, isn't allowed for the first couple of weeks.

"It's so hard," Larson says. "You can still giggle, but you don't realize how often we really do laugh during the course of a day."